No way does a Tower moment escape your attention. It basically says ‘kaboom’!

It may be an emotional shock. It may be physical. It may be getting fired from your job, or learning you have been lied to and now what are you going to do about it? It may be a plane crash, a storm, an earthquake, a tsunami, a detonated bomb.

The Tarot is somewhat under threat of ‘spiritual’ sanitisation these days. There’s a movement afoot to say Tarot’s Death card does not mean Death, the Tower card does not mean physical disaster. And the Eight of Swords no doubt, only means chagrin or an attitude of helplessness, and never means plumbing or toilets (which actually, it may do in my experience)

We are all so engaged in spiritual evolution, these rock bottom, immutable things will soon all be beneath our notice, except that we happen to inhabit the material as well as energetic plane, so had better engage with it while we are here.

But the oracular voice is older than anyone alive, and while it is a living oracle and therefore subject to vagaries of fashion in thinking, it must never lose sight of its roots and neglect the material plane. Life means struggle, Life demands Strength.

The Tower card is ruled by Mars, god of war.It’s day is Tuesday, named for Tyr, Norse god of war. If you ask when something will happen and then I draw the Tower card, it will likely happen on a Tuesday.

While Tarot is at times exceedingly subtle and The Death card may well not mean an actual physical death and the Tower card may not spell physical disaster, they well MIGHT. Real life readings for real life people demands respect, which means recognising terrible things really do happen, physically, and the reader needs to be prepared to acknowledge that and not seek to sugar coat Tarot with spiritual sounding avoidance, immediately jumping to say things along the lines of ‘the Death card. Well, this card means transformation.’

Oh does it? Does it now? Not that I am necessarily disagreeing, but try for a few specifics, and by the way, I do not wanna be transformed just yet, thank you. I’ve got things to do first, if the universe will allow it, and anyway I am transforming all the time, and so are you , like it or not, and hopefully not just with lines and wrinkles but with each new thing we learn .

And now that I thought about it, staring at my Tower card, I was being plum stupid. My day did indeed start with a teeny Tower moment. Teeny for me, but maybe not for some other living creature.

I can see the bird feeder from where I lie in bed in our first floor apartment. It hangs on the balcony door and it’s my delight to watch the songbirds arriving from about half seven. The robin arrives first and then the coal tit, and they each return a few times in quick succession, stocking up for the day.

This morning, a dark shape flared suddenly in the window followed by a smack and a thump as a bird hit the glass and the bird-feeder fell of its hook and dropped out of sight.

Il Matrimonio was out, pumping iron at the gym like a macho man, unless he was getting into quarrels with pensioners- again – and this is never too unlikely -the man is incorrigibly irritable and likely constitutionally deficient in Nat Phos -sodium phosphate.

I could not get up to see if there was an injured bird – pesky damn wheelchair business – and in fact when he got in ten minutes later, there was no bird. And no sign of loose feathers or blood.Even so a sparrowhawk could have come and snatched a bird of the feeder, hitting the pane in the process. Or else some little bird misjudged its flight. Either way, some bird got a shock, and so did I.

Was it the robin? I now draw The High Priestess, so probably it was.

Was it OK? Knight of Cups Reversed. Not really, poor thing. It had a fine fright.

But there was no Death card and I saw the robin again this afternoon, so hopefully, all’s well that ends well.

Tarot interpretation works on real life synchronicity, but what is synchronicity?

Definition as supplied by Merriem-Webster: the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

Classically this card refers to reaping a reward for hard work or patience and suggests that there will be a good return on a long term investment, but no quick returns. If it comes out reversed I’d be sensing a future poor performance or loss on your current or proposed investment. If you were a buyer, I might be sensing not to buy in this or that product range as not representing a good acquisition. It may either not sell well, or take forever to shift.

The client was asking about the shifting of retail stock, but while money was the presenting issue, and as often happens, a card detail suddenly leaped out at me.

‘Do you have sheep living behind your house?’ I asked.

‘Yes’, he said, ‘a field at the back.’

And this is typical of what Jung meant by synchronicity. Does it mean I enquire about sheep every time this card appears in a reading?

No. It absolutely doesn’t. It just so happened that on this occasion, it did.

Would it appear in a reading done for a sheep farmer?

It ought to.

If I was thinking of buying stocks or shares and this came up, would I go for it? Probably, depending on the surrounding cards.

A friend came to stay recently and brought a present for my birthday. We thought it might be fun for me to try and guess what was inside the packaging using my pendulum and cards. It was roughly cylindrical, not too heavy, rolled in bubble wrap and brown paper.

I held my pendulum over it.

‘Are the contents of this package edible?’ The pendulum span anticlockwise. No.(sob)

I drew the Three of Pentacles, a card signifying progress in business and pride in one’s work, and from The Gilded Tarot by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

‘Is it a craft item? I asked my friend.

‘Yes.’ she said, smiling from ear to ear, as ducks suddenly quacked outside on the pond and Il Matrimonio ran to the balcony to see there if there was a fox. There sometimes is. Then I drew the Six of Swords, a card of personal progress, solemn journeys and quests for learning.

Was it something to do with a river or riverbank, I wondered. Was it a little wooden boat? Or a frog? I like frogs.

‘No’. My friend said, smiling, ‘But you are warm. Now open it!

And inside it was – this! A wooden Indian Runner Duck. What a little character.

🙂

Well, I never. No wonder she’d been laughing to herself every time we’d fed the ducks, knowing what she had in store to give me.

Now, that is what I call a friend. And psychically, here was that darn Jungian synchronicity thing at work again.

Good try, Tarot my friend. Not a bull’s eye this time, but a respectable attempt, and this often is how Tarot works in a reading, too, regardless of the classical card meanings, sparking ideas directly off the imagery.

This is how, while Tarot presents a great academic study, anyone can read it, who likes to use associative thinking.

I was cackling peaceably into my cauldron, ie; cooking lunch when Il Matrimonio meandered in, nonchalantly asking; what did it mean if you had lost something, and asked the Tarot where it was, and you drew the Page of Wands?

I paused in my stirring, and asked why. Il Matrimonio does not in general, derive interest from anything Tarot-related, unless consulting about financial matters, and is otherwise mildly dismissive, despite it not having let him down so far. He was never an accountant but would have made an excellently sound one.

Our friend Ms X had lost her diary, she had just told him via ‘social meeja’. She is learning Tarot, had looked in her deck of Tarot cards, asking where the diary was, and had drawn the Page of Wands.

Using Tarot to locate lost objects can be a headache. But the imagery can prompt ideas or prompt the memory by visual cues alone, sometimes. Tarot reading works on associative thinking. Logic has its part to play, but psychic hits require lateral, not linear thinking. Readers build their own associations with the cards, over time and through practice. They add their own meanings to the cards, so that one reader can never say another reader is wrong, saying that a card means this or that in real terms, because interpretation arises from the reader’s own intuition.

My response was to say, adding a glug of olive oil to the pan was, that the card suggested, she took it out with her and had left it somewhere local.

Page = small. Wands = travel.

Additionally…or instead; I suggested, it was near somewhere warm or loud, such as a radiator next to a TV, or in the kitchen near the oven. Wands is the suit of the south, of warmth and anything loud and quick.

He came back saying, Ms X had been adamant she never took the diary out with her, and I remarked that, well, it was between her and her own Tarot, but that card strongly suggested she would find it, and probably quickly.

Ms X shortly later remembered that she had been to the hairdressers earlier that same day. She returned and found the diary was on the arm of a sofa there, next to the stereo.

Let’s the both of us add ‘stereo’ and ‘hairdresser’s, then, to the list of associations for the lively Page of Wands.

That’s how we have to do it. That’s how it’s done, and why it is an on-going study, however long you’ve been doing it.

Oh no! Oh, yes, I’m afraid. I wish it wasn’t so, but I undertake to demonstrate divination at work in the real world. Sometimes it’s fun, at least for me and I hope it is for you but sometimes it just can’t be. The title gives fair warning. Pass by if you can’t bear it, but if you’re learning Tarot, try to stay with it and not flinch. You may one day find yourself faced with someone in deep distress, hoping to find not solutions or advice, but some kind of sustenance, or at least meaning in their situation. The Tarot will rise to these occasions, if you will. because the Tarot is you, yourself, your deepest, archaic and arcane self.

Her Golden Tarot is another favourite, but one likes to ring the changes now and then.

It’s duckling time again out on the pond, and Nature is wreaking carnage, red in beak and claw. The most relentless predators by day are the sea-gulls. There are two duck mothers this season; one with an excellent track record of rearing and one with a dismal record. The successful mother has for the past 3 years, the neighbours downstairs tell us, reared at least 6 ducklings to independence from a brood of 12-15. The less successful mother loses them all and cries loudly. Anyone who says animals don’t feel what we do doesn’t watch closely enough. If they forget more quickly than we do, if they do, and I have my doubts, well, they need to, and it’s a blessed mercy.

It was cold, and the dismal duck was down to the last of her twelve ducklings on Monday night when Il Matrimonio went over to the pond to feed them, watching as the last duckling ran calling after its mother and she ignored it, eating and then wandering off. Maybe she had given up, and decided it was just no use, and all was lost.

A gull alighted, lingering near the duckling as it crouched shivering, calling for its mother. Seeing this Il Matrimonio could bear it no more, and it was not a ‘good’ thing to do; he knew that; we’ve watched enough David Attenborough, but there it is. The HUMAN animal, male as well as female, is hot-wired to respond to the cry of an infant in distress, and to the immediate, the personal and the particular.

Therefore, enter Il Matrimonio with one shivering duckling. By bedtime it had eaten enthusiastically (not bread; proprietary duck food) It had drunk lots, splashed about in a shallow dish and done much sitting in cupped hands, clearly regarding these as a warm place and acceptable brooding alternative.

It slept on a towel in the bath, curled into the lap of a large teddy bear. Next day it ran around, ate, drank, paddled, pecked my bare feet, calling for its mother, and was incessantly demanding of Il Matrimonio’s cupped hands for brooding.

‘What’s the plan?’ I fretted, ‘it’s been warmed and fed; it needs other ducks; it needs its mother, to go back as soon as possible and take its chances along with the other ducklings. Maybe the other duck will take it.’

Ducks can count, of course. There was no question of her being fooled by the appearance of an extra duckling.

‘It would be murder,’ said Il Matrimonio. The other duck was unlikely to accept it.

The one hope, and it was a long shot, was to get little D big enough to be safe from gulls, then return it in clement weather, and let it take its chances then. And indeed, it seemed to grow bigger even overnight.

But after Il Matrimonio brought D in on Monday night, I had drawn The Devil card, The Four of Coins and Death.

The Devil shows Pan/Nature in violent aspect. This is the truth, that Nature is full of violence. One creature or many creatures must die for another to live.

The Four of Coins represents holding on, a holding action, a brooding of money or other material possessions or objects.

Death speaks for itself. Many Tarot readers today won’t have it that the Death card may actually represent Death. Too unpalatable. Sorry to disagree. Call me old-fashioned, but the oracular mind is not susceptible to convenient reinvention.

The Death card does not always mean physical death, it is true. It may mean an ending in any other sense, or a transforming situation such as the ending of a job, or other situation, but to say it never does is to create the most enormous elephant in the room. Sometimes it has meant exactly what it says. Death as represented by this card is usually natural, often timely, rarely cruel or violent. There are worse cards the Tarot could use if it needed to communicate a sensing to do with such a terrible picture as that.

Last night at bedtime, little D looked so tired, head drooping as she sat in Il Matrimonio’s hands I felt a misgiving. I said, ‘she looks like she’s dying.’

It’s a tale of two cats ( and there’s another Miaow Tarot Tale or two in the archives.) Daughter Numera Una, Artemis, aka RT who’s 29 and a vet nurse, and a brill one; rang one evening two weeks ago, ‘Mutti, we seem to have lost an Elsa cat. Will you look in your cards about it? We’ve been searching and calling for the last three hours.’

Artemis has recently moved address and has two cats, both girls, Elsa and Salem. Elsa is a teensy bit (…let’s whisper this…) thick. Salem’s practically a goddamn genius. Here they are. Elsa top, Salem below with RT. You might be forgiven for wondering which one is the thickie and vice- versa. All I can say is, Salem is being seriously disrespected in being made to wear that pink combo which is actually Elsa’s.

Where might Elsa be? Let me say loud and clear I had no idea but I drew the Moon card first and put it to Artemis that she might have been frightened from returning by a barking dog living a door or two away.

There are other meanings for this card: lies, hunting, danger, tricky travel, infection, fertility, drama, psychic dreams, this immediate pictorial association was most I felt was most relevant to Elsa’s absence. Often this is how a Tarot reader works, look-and-speak-and-sod-the-book-meanings.

Next, I drew The Four of Swords; a knight entombed. This card signifies isolation, sickness, hospital visits, chapels and tombs and raised the fairly obvious question, had she got stuck or trapped? I thought of wheelie bins and asked was a collection due next morning? Artemis was horrified, thinking of a notorious incident in the media where a woman had maliciously swiped a kitty into a wheelie bin but in fact, the bin men had already been that morning, and I decided Elsa was not trapped in a wheelie bin, but might well be hiding behind one.

I drew the Five of Wands and asked RT had she been to Number Five to ask if Elsa had been seen there? Yes she had, and the woman had kindly checked her out-houses.

She asked, was Elsa coming home that night?

I drew three more cards, all upside down and said no, I didn’t see that, but I tended to think it would be all right. Elsa was not dead. She was not hurt. She was being a dumb-ski, not used yet to her new abode, she was disorientated and probably hiding no more than three properties away.

Animals may be the primary department of St Francis, but that former librarian, St Anthony, patron saint of lost things, has kindly helped us with lost beasts once before, and I suggested she ask him for help in bringing Elsa home.

Next morning I received this message.

Elsa-Smellsa just found 🙂 Could hear plaintive meowing when we called from the back garden coming from property to our rear so walked round and found her cowering down a little ginnel! She was very hungry but none the worse for wear. Salem was behaving very strangely this morning. I think St Antony acted through her somehow…It was her lead I followed when listening out for the meows!

What did I tell you? That Salem cat’s a genius. Yes, and of course, thank you too. Thank you very much, St Antony.

(You don’t have to be Catholic to ask him for help; we’re a bunch of heathens)

14 January: Wednesday evening at about 7.30, Il Matrimonio slithered into the study with a cup of tea for me. Most kind, but also, this was a warning to me that footie kicked off at 7.55 and he was to be considered unavailable until half time.

‘It’s Ipswich and Southampton,’ he hissed, biting into an apple himself, Eve had no chance. ‘Ipswich will get it.’

‘Do you think so?’ I said, reaching for my cards.

‘Well, I hope so, they’re doing well.’

I shuflled and drew a card asking, how will Ipswich do tonight against Southampton? I drew……oh no. The Star card but reversed, upside down. Image from The Gilded Tarot by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

The beautiful Star is Tarot’s card of hope and recovery, so I had to say I was sorry, but I thought Ipswich wouldn’t win this time. He glided from the room evincing a mild but measured displeasure, ‘we’ll ssseeeee.’

The score Southampton 1 Ipswich 0

I see Man City betting news people are following me on Twitter. Dare I look in my cards to see how Man City get on against Arsenal this Sunday? It might be more than my life is worth if I get it wrong. It might be more than my life is worth if I get it right.

This was written many months ago, amid much public speculation in the psychic community that the flight had been hijacked. My cards could not agree about that. See this sad UPDATE

Theories abound. This is just my take. I looked at this tragedy at the time, as did many practitioners of divination. It is only human nature that out of concern, ‘psychic’ specialists will look at such events through the lens of their particular skill.

The Tarot cards I drew included The Tower (catastrophe, a fall, a collapse), Page of Wands Reversed (spark/fire?) and The King of Cups Reversed (king subject to water/pilot submerged) and Judgement (all in heaven now). The absence of Emperor (government/anti-Government)and Devil (Rage, Evil, ) cards suggested there was no terrorism involved. The Judgement card is also of validation of an idea or a judgement, and may serve to indicate that the reader has interpreted the surrounding cards correctly.

Judgement, from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

Whether a ‘psychic’ has been employed officially on this investigation, it is not going to be publicised if that has been the case, and probably, it has not. This would require official sanction with access to the considerable resources required to follow up on findings, which may or may not prove correct. This would pose considerable PR difficulties. Other comments made on Quora in reply to this question, hostile to the very notion of ‘psychics’, make that abundantly clear.

These people may not be aware of the well established use of map dowsers in various fields, locating potential new sources of water, oil and gas for big organisations and sometimes local authorities. Dowsing, sometimes called ‘water-witching’ is an esoteric, or ‘psychic skill’ which could be described as remote viewing. It probably works on electro-magnetic vibrations sensed by the dowser and it has been used in archaeological exploration with clearly evidenced and documented results.

If all the available technology has failed, anyone able to locate the missing aircraft precisely enough to make a mark on a map, could be one of these people. It would still be a gargantuan task, given the enormous area to be covered. I once helped someone find a diamond ring, missing two years. It was not easy. The only way a reader of cards might tackle a location question on this scale would be to meditate on a given range of locations or options, selecting the most and least likely. Again, this would require active collaboration between government and aviation authorities and the ‘psychic.’

At the time, other readers suggested the aircraft came to land, or was force landed by terrorists etc. They suggested locations. There was and is very little question in my mind, that no-one individual or individuals is to blame for the fate of this aircraft. Accidents do happen. Tragedies do happen. Let Fate take the blame for this one.

Depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps during the Second Punic War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently returned from an overseas family vacation driving in Europe, marginally more relaxing than crossing the Alps with Hannibal. OK, it was intense, but let’s keep a sense of proportion. It was nothing like marching with Hannibal. I had scrambled eggs for breakfast every day, once with chopped chives. The sun shone all week. It was instructive, it made a change, and my husband, Il Matrimonio, was in seventh heaven; king of the road in his lovely new black shiny car that he, ahem, loves.

Below we have the The Chariot card from The Gilded Tarot, representing progress, teamwork, ambition, and literally, a vehicle. Image by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

Yes, it was Chariot time. What else could one do, but belt up, pray not to need the loo in a hurry; no joke if you’re having to use a wheelchair for any reason, and look and learn?

There was plenty to see; Reims Cathedral, the snowy summit of the Eiger, the battlefields of Ypres. No goats in Switzerland. Perhaps because it was still hot, they were still up on the high pastures. No ghosts in Ypres, or in Polygon Wood, where Kiwis, Aussies and Brits lie, all brothers together, though I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen one, standing waist high in the tall green fields.

No risk of mal- de- mer, we had gone through the Channel Tunnel. Quick and easy, no fuss, sitting, working up our best French, and in some cases, spoof French, to be spat out 25 minutes in La Belle France.

The course of the Channel Tunnel (English). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the return trip, however, there occurred a minor delay. We had made the crossing. The train had slowed right down. We’d had the announcements thanking us for travelling Euro-Tunnel, and were doing up our seat-belts ready to stop and drive off, when abruptly the train stopped, the lights went out and we were trapped in the dark in the belly of this vast tin-can underwater snake.

We heard announcements and apologies to the effect that power had been lost, preventing us from reaching the platform at Ashford, but hopefully it wouldn’t be long before power was restored.

How long would it be, I wondered? My tarot cards were in my suitcase, but I had my pendulum in my handbag. I held the pendulum, suspending it over my lap and asked, ‘how long till we move? Will it be 5 minutes?’

The pendulum dithered, then began to move in a circle, anti-clockwise. For me, that always means ‘no.’

It wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. So what. That’s the risk in consulting oracles.

‘How long till we move?’ I asked again. ‘Will it be 10 minutes?’ The pendulum hesitated, then began to swing clockwise. For me, that always means yes.

‘Only ten more minutes, with any luck,’ I said to Il Matrimonio, as he sat, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, in-between kissing it, or wishing he could.

‘Are we there, yet?’ the teen piped up, stirring it from the back of the car.

Il Matrimonio glanced at his watch, to monitor the prediction, and this is why I am able to tell you, the lights came back on, the power was back, and the train began to move, 9 minutes and 50 seconds later.

Anyone can learn to dowse. It’s not magic. OK, it is. It’s everyday human magic. You won’t always get it right. I don’t, but it’s one of those things you get better at with practice.

There are lots of books on the subject, and plenty of how-to articles on-line. No need to spend money to mobilize this magic. You don’t even need to buy a pendulum. You can use a ring on a string, or even a threaded needle, stuck into a cork. You need a cord or string for there to be that crucial swing, when gravity gets hold of the body twitch, when it comes, that’s the answer needing translation, the non-verbal reply coming from your central nervous system.

What you need to do is decide in advance what movement shall mean ‘yes’, what movement shall mean ‘no’, and what shall represent ‘don’t know’, or ‘ask again later.’

Then ask your question, relax, and trust yourself. Learning to trust yourself, that’s the hardest thing you have to teach yourself, if it doesn’t come naturally. It is the challenge in learning Tarot, it is the challenge in using the insights provided by dreams. It is the challenge in learning to believe yourself, and not beat yourself up when you take an instant ‘unfair’ like or dislike to someone or something. Have you ever felt like that and reasoned yourself out of it, only to come full circle?

Your first feeling is the one to trust. It can save much time, energy, heartache, or even money.

You know more than you know you know. Why don’t they teach this in school?

The use of divinatory tools is largely a means of silencing the counter-arguments of the know-it-all front brain. The conscious attention goes to the tool, creating a tiny oasis of stillness in which to more easily connect with the silent voice of the body’s primary intelligence; instinct.

It trumps tunnel vision, any time. Unless, perhaps, it’s a vision in a tunnel.

The Tarot’s Six of Cups evokes nostalgia, places, things and people of happy times, childhood, simple things, people and pets at play. It may be forecasting a return to an old haunt, or the re-appearance of an old friend. Drawn reversed, upside down, it might be saying don’t go back. There is no nourishment there for you at this time. As LP Hartley famously said in the opening of his novel, ‘The Go-Between‘…’the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.’

The Six of Cups from The Gilded Tarot. Image Reproduced by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti.

The dramatic limestone headland of the Great Orme separates the largely Edwardian seaside town of Llandudno from the drama of the Conwy Estuary just round the corner, with its stupendous castle and walled town.

The technology pedigree of this area is quite something, from the ancient copper mining, to the Iron Age forts, to Edward I‘s castle, to the building and embarkation of The Mulberry Harbour used in D-Day, and in recent times, the conversion of a railway tunnel at Caernafon that become a road tunnel. (We won’t dwell on the overflowing sewage problems it’s had at some times)

The Orme- a Viking name meaning Serpent- is like a children’s wonderland.

It’s all going on! To appreciate the Serpent, drive around the base…the marine drive is 4km long around the base. Merlin, eat your heart out. And Tolkein as well.

The summit complex at the top of the Great Orme Landudno (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A small road peels off left heading uphill, passing a chapel on its way to the summit. At the grassy knolly summit, just asking to be rolled and played on, cable cars glide overhead, people sit smiling, chugging along on what is surely the shortest train journey ever, from the station the few hundred yards to the stop at the cable car cafe.

Plenty of business happening here.

A neolithic copper mine is set in a great hollow on the summit. Walk or drive down into it, walk on wooden bridges, look down into the ancient industrial excavations, put out of business in the Iron Age.

Coming back down from the summit to rejoin the marine drive, the chapel’s chuchyard tilts so steeply, and the dead can see the sea so up close and personal you feel they might all tumble in.

Asian families were out in force picknicking,celebrating Eid. A small girl dressed in pink and coral, smiling shyly, put her hands in prayer position and bowed a holiday greeting as our car went past.

Those naughty kashmir goats…where would we spot them this time? Driving out again next day at sunset, we had a goat lottery…no prizes, just a guessing game. How many goats would we spot on the marine drive?

My husband said 4, my daughter said 7, I said 11 plus but rounding the very last bend, we still hadn’t potted a single goat and we had never yet seen them at this point on the route, so far round. Not a goat in sight. Oh hang on. Yes! Hallelujah. There they were, resting or grazing in the apricot light as they faced the setting sun over Anglesey.

13 goats. Only two pictured here, but they are quite some characters.

I was unbearably triumphalist, but still, my neck was not wrung and I’m here to tell the tale. Simple things are so often the best things, and so are the silly things, sometimes.

“Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with.”- Robert Brault.

Wear your warm coat but in clement weather, this place is like some child’s imaginary world.

For students of Tarot, or the just curious, a few words about The Ace of Cups.

Meanings: Inception, Awakening of Love, Creativity, Vision and the Empowerment of Intuition. It is Beauty. It is The Element of Water, it is The Chalice, The Holy Grail. Sometimes it indicates a coming birth. I have known it accurately indicate healing and recovery from illness or after an accident. It is Grace.

It is known as the Ace of Hearts in a deck of playing cards.

‘My Cup Runneth Over’ is the moment that cannot be surpassed.

Whereas the Ace of Wands, Ace of the South, refers to the primal spark, the fires of Creation, the Ace of Cups, Ace of the West, is the matrix of Life.

The Ace of Cups speaks of Source. Physically, The human body runs primarily on water and minerals. Every physiological process that happens inside the body needs water. The human body is made up of more than 70% water. The blood is more than 85%, the brain more than 80%, muscles more than 75%, and the liver is 96% water.

But beyond the immediate physical, what is our most distant physical story, back to the point of Creation, or as some might prefer to think of it, life’s origin in space, or divinity? Dust from space ultimately cross-reacted making water, an epic of chemistry which made the seas, where Life on Earth began.
We are undines, raised by evolution from the deep.
Sublimis ab unda.

The poem below, for me echoes the deeps contained within the image of The Ace of Cups. It’s from a little known contemporary poet of rare subtlety, yet also directness and integrity.

A poem, like a song, like a picture, a sculpture, a photograph, a smile, a kiss, is a manifestation of the Ace of Cups, of the moment, but eternal.

Here is a Ace within the Ace.

Small Object of Desire

I suppose I should have picked my wedding ring
but that is personal and finite to me
as is my two faced charm on a silver chain
triangular, goldstone, tourmaline

But I chose this, lifted from some shore line,
a smaller bit than I’d found and lost before;
a spindle from a whelkish structured shell
more beautiful than any sculptor’s form.

It gives only a hint of its infinite fetch,
newel staircase, ramp to raise the megaliths,
invasive toxic spirochete to invest my blood,
screw my life force with its sickening brood.

No porcelain is half so fine,
that comes from Meissen’s arcane kiln.
This is the divine, the spiral double helix.
Where else should it be but on a beach?

My small object of desire, refined by tidal pull,
inch long, white and deeply curved,
maths of all dimensions along its reach,
shape and key to life, needs only my breath to live.

‘Schools out for EVER. School’s out COMPLETELY’…though it never is, or shouldn’t be for anyone with a curiosity greater than an amoeba’s.

Teachers: great ones, good and bad ones, the malevolent or indifferent. The ones I remember with affection, I remember for a variety of reasons.

Gentle bachelor Mr F always wore a salmon pink jumper and taught history. I was in his good books for ever, after asking a guest historian, a Professor David Hampson, what was later termed in my report, as ‘a very perceptive question’…an over-egging of my achievement my family found hilarious.

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Mr F died of cancer quite young, and was remembered by later pupils as prone to violence. But it was the affliction of the tumour in his brain, creating cruel change. He threw blackboard dusters at people.A most gentle person.

It wouldn’t be allowed today.

Big, loud, red-faced Mr W, was Head of Hawk House, of which I was an incumbent and he taught me Maths. You’d hear the roaring from his office after assembly as he dealt with one bully or another.
‘Ohhh,’ he’d roar.’So you think it’s clever to get a little first year lad by his ear, do you? Tell me, how do YOU like it when I do THIS?’

‘Aayaa, ayaa! No sir!’

‘Or this?’

‘Ayaa, ayaa! no sir!’

‘Well, don’t you do it then, or you’ll be back in here for some more.’

It wouldn’t be allowed today.

Meeting me in the corridor at break times he’d press me to the wall with his enormous belly, and, stinking of cigarette smoke, he would bellow good naturedly from his great height. ‘Hello! SILLY WOMAN! How are you diddling?’
I knew, as did my sisters at the same school and as young people immediately do know; he was OK, not even remotely creepy, so we only laughed about it, while avoiding it if we could. I only smile at the memory but…

It wouldn’t be allowed today.

One of my ‘life lessons’ came from an elderly and very gentle science teacher. Mr Vest (yes, really) gently admonished me one day for my untidily presented homework. Embarrassed, I explained that my pen was leaky.

He said, ‘Now Katie, I know you like sayings. What’s the saying for this situation?’

I couldn’t guess which one he might mean.

‘A bad workman blames his tools’ …

An apple for teacher. But our memories are the apples they have given us, crisp and sharp, rosy and polished, maggoty and rotten.

A regular client – she’s been using my service six or seven years now- owns a boutique where I live. She is a rock and a gem. has been in business more than 20 years and employs a 4-8 staff at any given time. She wanted the Tarot’s inputs as part of planning her buying trip to London Fashion Week.

How did this work?

Tarot had previously forecast a challenging year to come for her business in 2012, with a need to diversify.
Responding to this, a few days ahead of her buying trip to London Fashion Week, the client briefed me with checking out a list of 20 fashion collections which she had shortlisted as buying possibilities.
My brief was to dowse through this list, identifying which collections represented the best buys for her boutique in terms of likely future sales revenue.

How did I set about it?

I carried out card counting spreads in respect of each collection listed. Ithen checked these findings against my pendulum. A clockwise swing of the pendulum was positive corroboration. An anti clockwise swing of the pendulum was a negative which demanded further enquiry for clarification.

Collections getting a positive reading of 6/8 or better were flagged up as Green for BUY
Collections getting a positive reading of 5/8 or 6/8 were flagged as Amber-Green BUY SELECTIVELY
Collections getting a positive reading of 4/8 were flagged as Amber OCCASIONAL PIECES
Collections getting a positive reading of 3/8 were flagged as Amber-Red IF IN DOUBT LEAVE
Collections getting anything below this were flagged as Red. WARNING!

The Tarot offered other comments and suggestions.
It is too soon to verify the sales forecasting.
But a note from my client confirmed that with the Tarot’s help, I had at least accurately anticipated her reactions upon actually seeing the colelctions for herself in person. This reinforced her own instincts and she told me, this reinforcement from another quarter helped her arrive at her decisions more quickly and with confidence.

It afforded her a ‘second opinion’ to draw on when she was unsure. An inside track with no vested interest other than in giving reliable service.

Tarot is at the Questioner’s service. The Questioner is always charge and remains in control of the use he or she chooses to make of the information.
What a business dowser can do, at the least, is offer a virtual psychic companionship, resulting in avoidance of waste, risk and loss through uncertainty in difficult times.

Is it profanity, is it unspiritual to use the Tarot for business, for money making?
Well, is it profane to help people working for their daily bread, who are providing work for others in the process?

It is Life which is sacred, not the 78 pieces of cardstock which comprise in physical terms, the oracle of Tarot.

The Tarot is a portal for reaching inward, then reaching outward, to me, ‘myself’, to ‘you’, to ‘us’, to ‘them’.

The Tarot card that might be talking about things going bump in the night, and we don’t mean burglars, or …well, you know…is The Moon card: Its meanings: Dreams, Illusions, Shadows, Psychic Perception, Deceit, Danger, Fear of the Unknown, Paranoia.

Things that go bump in the night. If it’s filmable, if it’s reproducable, I don’t think it’s the real/unreal thing.

Why? Because such experiences are perceptions of the Amygdala. The eyes see what the brain sees, projecting, not reflecting. This is the vision of the psychic eye. It does not mean that it is not ‘real’.

Reports of ghosts may be considered suspect for a number of reasons. For one thing, they can be good for business…certain businesses. There was an interesting legal situation in the ’90s when a famously haunted Lancashire property, Chingle Hall, was sold at a value to reflect its haunted status with tourist income potential, which did not, em, materialise as substantially as expected.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t ghosts anywhere, anytime, ye who cry scorn and derision. It’s something so easy to do, just dismiss it, if it hasn’t happened to you. Ghosts are not performing seals, or maybe it requires a certain kind of sensitivity to be open to that perception. Which begs the question, what is a ghost, anyway?

Have I experienced anything of that sort, myself? Yes, I have, on a few occasions. The first occasion was long before I ever thought of learning Tarot, and it was extraordinary although the full strangeness did not hit me right away or even for some years. I was ‘fetched’ to a scene where a man had just died, and it turned out to have been the man himself who had done the fetching. There was the body, round the back of M&S in Leicester, there was the ambulance, and the paramedics, trying to resuscitate him, but he was now too far outside himself, and very shocked at its suddenness, poor man.

These days, there’s a small dog on the staircase just now and then. I’ve seen it running down, fading in and out of view. Nothing unpleasant whatsoever. I’ve seen it in the kitchen and on the landing, and I’ve seen it run under the dining table. It’s the size of a large terrier with pricked ears and a short dark coat. I see the movement and the shape, not the detail.

I imagine it’s some kind of energy residue; a print or a memory of a previous household pet.

Other things over the years have been sadder, stranger, creepier, and I have definitely not wished to encourage them.

I’m not asking if you ‘believe’ in such. If you don’t, you don’t, and many don’t. I get that. But, I have heard a lot of stories, presented quite matter of factly, by people in perfect possession of all their marbles. If you are interested, look up the books of TC Lethbridge, psychic researcher and academic with a scientific background. He said, ‘today’s magic is tomorrow’s science,’ and I think he’s near the mark.

The world is not only stranger than we know. It may be stranger than we CAN know. Why should recognising possibilities and the limits of current understanding be a barrier to enquiry?

Tarot, Runes, our dreams, myths and songs, are some of the many boats available for exploring these deep waters. Some may prefer to stay in harbour, and not explore at all, and that’s fine; they needn’t. But not everyone has the choice, the current pulls them out. I chose Tarot but I didn’t choose the things that went before, I learned they were part of my make-up. For all our intellectual achievements and aspirations, resistant to ‘superstition’ or not ‘we’ remain an instinctive animal. We rely on it for our safety. If someone gives you the creeps, then they give you the creeps, and there’ll be a reason. Police, Emergency Services Personnel, the Military, all need good instincts, or else.

To be psychic is only an extreme form of instinct. This is our nature and our default. Factual truth may also be poetic. Stories come from someone’s experience, and myths and fairy tales from a collective experience. In this sense, however fanciful, even ghost stories contain some essential truth. They do not lie.

Here was an instance of using tarot card counting to arrive at a qualified forecast.

My daughter, 16 at the time, was learning piano. She went for lessons once a week and practiced – ahem, sometimes– on a small, reconditioned 1930s piano in the dining room. We had been hearing a lot of renditions of ‘Oliver!’ – Fagin’s song about reviewing the situation, ‘I think I’d better think it out again!’

At Christmas I got a phone call the piano teacher, to say my daughter would soon be due to put in for entry for her Grade 2 exam, but she wasn’t going to be ready as she wasn’t putting in the necessary work. Well, I asked my daughter, did she want to go for it or not? It was her decision, but if she decided to go for it, I expected her to show that she meant business.

She opted to go for it, upped the practise sessions, and had the exam 29 March, held at school during the school day. She came dragging home with a long face. ‘I made loads of mistakes,’ she said, ‘in both pieces.’

What did the Tarot think, she wanted to know. Had she passed? She couldn’t see how, she was sure she had made ‘loads of mistakes’.

‘And what did you do? I asked.

‘I kept going,’ she said.

Slips might not have mattered as much as she feared if the examiner had detected an overall fluency, I told her. The examiner would expect slips due to nerves and overall ‘flow’ would have been the indicator of underlying technical competence.

I drew 8 cards and turned them over. Six were upright, which to me signified a yes answer from tarot. Two were reversed, upside down, indicating a no answer. Therefore the Tarot thought it highly probable, a 75% probability that she had in fact passed, despite her feelings about it.

Two cards in particular were encouraging. The Page of Swordsmade an appearance and was upright. This was a lucky sign because my daughter is herself a Page of Swords, born under Aquarius. Facially, the card resembles her too, and the hair is not dissimilar, nor the build.

The Page Of Swords, The Gilded Tarot, publisher Llewellyn, used with kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

The Queen of Swords was another of the cards drawn in its upright or positive aspect. Was the examiner an older lady, elegant and well-spoken? I asked her. Yes, she said, sort of old-fashioned, serious, but very nice.

‘She liked you,’ I said, I sensed that this Queen had recognised in her a young ‘page of music’.

Because the suit of Swords has strong correlations with Science – Physics in particular- and Medicine, Mathematics and Music.

These two court cards appearing amongst the six upright cards reinforced my confidence on her behalf and anyway, the thing was done, and I told her not to worry. And she did pass.

A good discipline for a reader is to read little and often. It’s a kind of self-programming. Make it tough on yourself, tarot is wonderfully subtle but sometimes you need to nail a colour to the mast.

However open your vision, and habits of interpretation when doing readings for others, it’s good to know you will generally get it right. You won’t always of course, so feed yourself a piece of humble pie every day, but you need to be right a LOT as a professional reader, or what’s your value? So practice, and challenge yourself with the nail-biting no-no that is the CLOSED QUESTION.

‘Will XYZ happen or won’t it?’ The second card is to ask why will it or won’t it? The discussion or meditation then opens out again if necessary.

Here is a recent example: I was thinking of attending a tarot social event, taking a friend, a fellow local tarot reader and professional clairvoyant . Knowing what a hermit-crab this shy friend can be, I marked him as a POSSIBLE attendee only, half-expecting him to bow out in advance.

Two days before the scheduled event, he rang to say he’d be going, but I still expected him to change his mind, and the day before I pulled two cards to test this out.

I drew The Ace of Wands Reversed. Wands is the suit of trips and longer journeys, also of selling, bartering and exchange, buzz, chatting, marketing…general communications. Drawing it reversed, denied, suggested he was about to cry off. Now, this was absolutely fine, and was just as I expected, but could the Tarot tell me why in advance of the facts?

I drew The Hierophant Reversed. The Hierophant which used to be known as The Pope, suggests a priest, a teacher, a counsellor or healer, a church, a tradition and an established order. It is orthodoxy and conformity. It can also signify marriage…and keys! That’s the Tarot for you!

The Hierophant from Ciro Marchetti's The Gilded Tarot: publisher Llewellyn.

I looked at it and was puzzled. ‘But A***** doesn’t GO to church!’ I said.

Later that afternoon he rang to say he still wanted to go to the tarot event but was now double-booked. I was glad to think he had plans elsewhere, he’d been a bit down and depressed, and I read this as a sign of recovery. I told him not to worry about the tarot social, I could see he really wanted to go to the other thing instead.

What was it?

A Christian Science church, he said. Did I want to go? Er, well, no. They had a guest speaker coming in, he said. A healer visiting from the States.

Ahaaa! So that was why the Tarot had seemed to say ‘church.’ But it also meant ‘priest/healer.’ It knew what was going on, all right. And the cards had been drawn reversed because, having decided time-planning didn’t allow him to go to both, the events were then being perceived as being in conflict with one another.

Not a cheerful tarot tale today, but terrible and sad. Such is life sometimes. But maybe also indicative of something so very much more than that.

On March 2nd, I had the cards out to get a sense of the following day. My husband, Il Matrimonio had flown to the States, and my 16 year old daughter had required a little support in previous days to deal with a nasty little outbreak of attempted bullying. A venomous sneak weasel boy, though this is unfair on weasels which are such attractive animals in many ways.

Looking out in respect of both situations I drew cards which made me feel like I had been hit in the stomach.

Justice Reversed with the Knight of Swords Reversed is a seriously unpleasant combo. It brings with it such ideas as a judgement against someone, injustice (but for whom?) attack, violence, anger, ruthlessness, cruelty, murder, sudden violent fatality.

The Knight of Swords Reversed is, I personally feel, the card most to be dreaded of the cards of the Minor Arcana. Upright, it has certain stern but powerful virtues, speed, decisive action, incisive thinking, swift invocation of force, attack, resolute defence, a knight rides out for you full pelt, or you yourself, are that knight.

From The Gilded Tarot: Ciro Marchetti: Llewellyn.

In other words, drawn right way up, the card promises everything you’d howl for if you needed the cavalry. Drawing it reversed I knew a pang of dread.

The three of Wands was the reason I did not think this was not about my daughter. It’s a card of overseas, so now my thoughts switched to Il Matrimonio, and since Swords correlates to the element of air, I thought, what about his flight? Was he having trouble at Immigration? Just then, he rang. No, he was fine, he had landed, very excited at collecting his hire car, (the big baby!)

So what was it? Suddenly the thought came into my mind ‘death sentence.’ Where had that come from? What string had the Tarot plucked to send me such a dire vibration? I went to the computer and, on another impulse Googled ‘death sentence.’

And my eye went straight to a link. I opened it and read a piece that had just been posted, 6 minutes previously, which would have been almost simultaneous upon my drawing of the cards. The item was copyright, but it was in that days news in the States, in particular Alabama.

In short, tragedy. In short, murder. in 2008 a young man, an ex-soldier who had served in Iraq called Courtney Lockhart abducted and killed an 18 year old student called Lauren Burk, shooting her in the back as she tried to escape.

Wednesday 2 Match 2011, and Courtney Lockhart, a man with a daughter of his own, had his earlier sentence reviewed, of prison without parole, and in the presence of Lauren’s grieving family, and in his mother’s presence received a death sentence from the judge who had decided to overrule the jury.

Had this double death-knell then been felt so acutely and at the same time so deeply it’s vibration had crossed the Atlantic to reach an utter and previously completely unaware stranger?

Well, actually, is that so hard to imagine?

If it is possible to read tarot for people at a distance, which it certainly is, why should this not have travelled through the ether to an intuitive who was extra-receptive and ‘facing the right way’ because she was tuning in on her own daughter’s security and was also in a psychic sense ‘facing west’ with a husband flying state-side?

Did this vibration originate with the sentenced man and his family, or the victim’s family? Did it emanate from one of these individuals, or all of them rolled up together in a snowball of agony, a Munchian scream in the ether? Or from the residual energy, the ghost if you like, of the poor little girl herself?

It makes me think yet again that the world, and we, are so very much more than matter which is really energy slowed down. Life isn’t discrete, isn’t so lumpen. It’s more like a vast invisible web, dew drops where the sun catches it, beautiful and ugly. Bluebottles trapped, struggle darkly iridescent.

You don’t have to be ‘psychic‘ in order to learn tarot, which is a skill of divination, in which one attempts to uncover hidden or semi-hidden information or understanding. You do have to be interested in symbols and associative thinking, you do have to be receptive, but to be ‘psychic’ helps sometimes, to make the symbolic more precise, and to talk in every day, concrete terms, about specifics.

Am I ‘psychic’? Yes, to an extent, and so probably, are you, but what does it mean?

The word ‘psychic’ may comes from the Greek, ‘psyche’, meaning soul and derived from the word ‘psychikos’ meaning, mental, of the mind. ‘Psychic’ implies soulic knowledge, the soul entering and leaving the body on the breath. The word intuition also refers to an inner knowing, that which is our inner tutor, and which we all possess as an inseparable element of normal human instinct.

So what is the difference between being intuitive and psychic? It’s subtle. Perhaps it’s most simply defined as a matter of precision or degree.

The intuition provides us with impressions, feelings, and reactions. Time being of the essence where safety is an issue, intuitions arrive instantly, in advance of any hard evidence to explain them. Intuition is a courier of super-fast intelligence, bypassing conscious processes. Everyone is intuitive. It is a function of competent, normal intelligence, but not everybody, maybe for cultural or ‘intellectual’ reasons, feels comfortable about acknowledging it.

Some ‘diss it’ by saying they will deal only with ‘proven facts’ or evidence or reason.

Yawn. Well, let them, if they want to limit themselves unnecessarily. But this, it could be argued, is actually anti-intellectual. The mind is a whole, not a pie servable in slices.

Psychic insights come when they come, are instantaneous and specific. Something may be ‘seen’ or ‘heard’ or ‘smelled’ or dreamed of, but it will be particular, unlike the formless but none the less powerful, and even life- saving promptings of the intuition.

Early Tarot Images of La Papesse, or High Priestess.

The High Priestess, pictured above, represents both the Intuition, and the Psyche and psychic promptings, or refers to a person who may be female or male, who works or serves as an advisor, or seer.

Reading for a client one evening, I sensed she was holding something back, and to encourage her, asked her directly about a ‘rude man’ I kept sensing, a bully with a loud voice, fair or ginger, a salesman of some kind? The card triggering this was the King of Wands Reversed.

My client said she knew who this was; a man who had a market stall near hers, but she insisted that she’d come only for advice regarding retirement. Courtesy demanded I take her at her word, and we carried on, but I remained uneasy that she hadn’t shared the real worry, and so I hadn’t had a chance to try and help. Such was my feeling.

After she had gone, I was lying in front of the television with a cup of tea, when I suddenly ‘saw’ her in my mind’s eye. She was holding a big round pot in both hands, and she was mending it, with great care and attention.

Oh! I thought. Well, I had mentioned to her that I could see her taking up pottery (prompted by the appearance of the Page of Coins) But I was struck, the mental picture was so vivid.

Next day she called, but I had someone with me and couldn’t call back straight away. When I returned the call, the phone rang for a long time before I rang off. She called again and at last we spoke. The lady now wanted to tell me what was bugging her about the rude man. He was an unwanted admirer. He’d told her that he’d been to me for a reading, that I had performed psychometry on his wrist watch (psychometry is a psychic reading performed using as a focus an object connected to the person being read through a history of physical contact or at least, proximity) I had predicted, so this man said, that he and this lady were going to marry.

So her real reason for coming to see me had been to check this out. Would I say anything that would correspond with this man’s account?

The gentleman was a fibster. What a lot of porky pies and utter ……

I did not know him, I had not read for him, nor do I offer psychometry readings. Nor would I ever have said such a thing. I do not offer predictions, but forecasts, offering a sense of the odds on a question, but nothing prescriptive, for whom am I to disregard the possibilities of free will or the wild card?

I told her this, we chatted awhile, and as a light hearted way of signing off the call, I mentioned my vision of the night before.

‘ That’s why I couldn’t pick up the phone when you rang!’ she said. ‘That’s why I

Psychic Chasms (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

had to call you back. I had glue all over my hands, trying to fix a pot I broke yesterday!’

The vision had therefore been an instance of psychic, as opposed to intuitive ‘knowing’.

It’s a matter of record now, I’m as sane as the next person, or at least as sane as any one of us could prove ourselves to be, but I am a ‘potty’ psychic.

I was in good odour with a regular client. In June 2010, a reading indicated that her husband had reason to be hopeful of early retirement with a viable retirement package. He had been wanting to go for some time, but hadn’t found an early way out that he would find acceptable financially.

The cards assessed the chances of an opportunity materialising before the end of 2010 as 6 out of 8, odds I translated as meaning it was highly likely, though not inevitable.

Nothing is inevitable but Death…and taxes, so the saying goes. The future consists of so many complex variables, I find it more meaningful to attach a weighting to ‘predictions’, or forecasts, as I prefer to think of them.

What’s the difference? Well, a prediction is a statement about the future presented as a virtual fact, a done deal. A forecast is an indication of the likelihood that something will happen, leaving space for the workings of undetected random chance and free will. Society uses all manner of forecasting…from the weather to the Stock Exchange. tarot readers just offer another, personalised form, intuitively collected using tarot symbols as tools of assessment and translation, as our equivalent of the gathering and statistical analysis of hard data.

The chief cards I drew indicative of a viable ending coming into view over time’s horizon were The Emperor Reversed, Justice and Judgment.

The Emperor often indicates a man of mature years, or an organisation, generally a large one. His employer was a global defence company.Justice = Law, contract. Judgement = as in Judgement Day, in a benign way, a time of reckoning, the right time for completing or ending something.

I heard today he was invited to go in December, as part of a larger redundancy programme and – which will not necessarily the case for all such invitees – he is delighted.

There are many depictions of animals and birds in the Tarot. They form a great part of the human landscape physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and symbolically. If there’s a heaven, what would it be without them? I wouldn’t mind, personally if mosquitoes, maggots, deadly snakes and komodo dragons didn’t make it. Spiders would be all right as long as they were non-venomous and less than two inches in diameter. However, it’s not me in charge.

The songbird traditionally most associated with Christmas, or to give the winter festival its older name, Yuletide – is the robin redbreast. The cheeky, dumpy little European robin, Erithacus rubecula is a member of the flycatcher family.

Its preferred habitats are woodlands, hedgerows, parks and garden. Its staple diet is worms, seeds, fruits and insects. It will fight over sunflower seeds and it adores mealworms. You can buy these in dried form in lots of outlets including many supermarkets. They look revolting though people used to baiting fish hooks won’t mind them. Robins have been to take mealworms by hand, so irresistibly delicious are they to robin-kind.

Male and female European robins are identical to look at, adults of both sexes having the red breast, while young robins have no red breast, and are a speckled golden brown colour. The lack of red breast in the young defends them from territorial attack by adults. The robin lives a little over one year on average. If it lives beyond 1.1 years it may achieve twelve years and has been known to reach the age of twenty, but long life is rare.

The robin’s endearing appearance belies its feistiness. It’ll fight to the death for its territory, and one in ten die in combat. They have been seen to chase off pigeons much bigger than they are. The one in my garden right now however, is rather timid and will scurry into the rosemary when a pigeon appears. Well, I suppose they are individuals just as we are.

Robin redbreast builds a cup-shaped nest in a hole or hidden in ground cover, and will sing all year round. Click here to hear its song and for other general information from the RSPB:-

The robin received the human pet name of ‘Robin’ in the fifteenth century. It has a special place in the library of legends embedded in the Tarot, and a robin may be observed in some decks, including the King of Pentacles card in the Sacred Circle Tarot Deck.

It belongs there by virtue of the symbolism and superstitions attached to it.

Some older people consider the robin a bird of ill omen, a harbinger of death. It is considered unlucky for a robin to fly into a house as Death is expected to follow. For this reason, a Christmas card with a picture of a robin on it is not always welcome with people aware of this tradition. But compassion and care for the dead is also attributed to the robin. One legend says that it tried to help Christ by pulling off a thorn from the crown Jesus had been made to wear, injuring itself in the process – hence its red breast. Another old tale says that it was a robin who found the bodies of the lost ‘Babes in the Wood‘, and who buried them with a golden coverlet of fallen leaves.

If your robin seems shy, it may be a visitor from Europe. British robins haunt gardens more than their European relatives, are more used to human contact and are bold in comparison with European winter visitors which tend to favour woodlands in their native lands.

All right, you robin.

English: Robin Redbreast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m on my way out with sugared bread (for energy it’s better to give them cake or sugared bread than plain bread) Here are some more of those revolting mealworms, and let’s hang up another half coconut of fat and nuts. But note this, my fine robin friend; this is not just for you, but is for sharing with the blue-tits and coal-tits, the blackbirds, sparrows and the finches.

The North Wind Doth blow

And we shall have snow

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

He’ll hide in a barn

To keep himself warm

And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

Let’s see what the robin currently peering out from the safety of the big rosemary bush, will communicate via the Tarot.

Are you a cock or hen robin?

Answer card: The High Priestess. Just to make sure, I pull another card and get the Moon Reversed. Meanings: I am a hen bird. I am solitary right now, I want no mate. This is not the time.

What are you thinking right now?

Answer card: The Empress. Meaning? What have we here? Food! I have discovered a new harvest! Being provided for, I must eat my fill while I can.

I pull another card, just as the robin flies off again…and, strangely enough, the card is The Chariot.The robin has flitted just a short distance to sit on top of the seed feeder hung in the bare branches of the laburnum tree.

Why have you gone to sit there?

Answer card: The Seven of Wands Reversed. Meaning: I am new to this garden and I must be careful. This is a good vantage point from which to spy out enemies and not be taken unawares.

What’s your favourite time of year?

Answer card: The Empress Reversed. Meaning: A time when there are plenty of fruits and seeds, but there are still sheltering leaves on the trees. A time when there are still long hours of light to feed by, and sometimes there’s still warmth…the night is not so bitter, the air does not bite so hard. My legs creak like sticks at first light when I must move for food or die. How I wish it could always be the time of the Empress.

OK, verification may not be an option as with readings done for domestic species. Still, I have done animal readings before, and know intuitive communication can work inter-species. Maybe it would not work with all species, but the tarot affords a means of extending perception beyond the boundaries of self, and living things share common drives and goals. Sentient and sensate beings, whether bare or feathered, scaled or furry, are inextricably subject to vagaries of environment, the common denominator in shared consciousness.

During the severe winter of 1962/63, the UK robin population was worse than decimated, reduced to an estimated 50-60 breeding pairs. Spare a little if you can, for your fellow creatures outside this winter.

Idly playing with my cards at the dining table, I asked Il Matrimonio what he was doing with the fish tanks. He kept two tanks of tropical fish at that time, guppies in one, neon tetras in the tank in the dining room.

Male guppies are colourful, every individual’s unique. The females are drab coloured. They produce live babies, but the adults tend to cannibalise the newborns if they don’t make for the weeds as soon as they emerge, and hide there until they’re too big to be eaten. Awww. So sweeeet.

Neon tetras are small and slim, blue, red and white, with a zingy neon strip along their sides, as the name suggests.

The hubby explained that he was introducing a young male guppy into the tetra tank for his own safety. Whereupon, using my old Universal Waite deck that day, I drew The High Priestess. (US Games)

However, I work with reversed cards, and I drew her reversed. A reversed card is not necessarily negative in connotation. It may simply flag up an area requiring special care. But I felt this was a warning, to be read in a literal sense.

‘I don’t think you should do that,’ I said. ‘I’m seeing danger here from a lady who is blue, white and red. I think the tetras will have him if you put him in there, and I think he won’t last two weeks.’

(Tarot can work like this with timing. The High Priestess is Major Trump 2.)

Il Matrimonio was having none of it. The tetras were no risk to the guppy, they were too small, completely harmless. What did I know about tropical fish, etc etc?

Eff all, it is true. Please, any proper a-fish-ionad-os reading this, do not troll me on this score. But the reader does not have to factually know. That is the point and indeed the potential usefulness of oracular divination.

‘Ok,’ I said, ‘in which case it is a warning against the tetra tank. I wouldn’t put him in there.’

‘Well, he won’t last if I leave him where he is.’

A few days later, poor guppy was gone. RIP. Not so much as a fin left.

Not saying the tetras did it any harm. It might have been something about the tank, and maybe guppy was toast whatever Il Matrimonio did, but they certainly cleaned him away.

All we had left were the tetras, swimming innocently about, the piscine little High Priests/esses in their grotto.

In view of the fact that today is ‘Father’s Day‘, as if for a father, every day is not, I thought I’d talk about the ultimate Tarot card of Masculinity with a capital M, The Emperor.

In general, ‘The Emperor’ appearing in a Tarot reading signifies the current extra significance of an important man in your life, at an individual level. He’s a father, husband, employer, friend or advisor.

At a conceptual level, The Emperor stands for government, law and order, other big, hierarchical organisdations. He is the Armed Forces. He is the principle of protection and of the guardian at work in society and in the home.

See those ram’s heads on the arms of his throne? The Emperor is associated with the sign of Aries, the fiery ram. It may indicate a future event occurring at that time of year.

Image below is The Emperor from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

Not surprisingly I’ve drawn this card when doing readings for police officers, both male and female. Women too can embody The Emperor’s qualities.

But once – and I won’t handle any more requests for lawsuit predictions; I drew the Emperor card, and it was talking about a real live judge. This judge was in the US. We won’t say where. My client was very anxious on her son’s behalf. He had been accused of sexual assault.

The details of the charge sounded so minor as to be almost laughable, but even so, and whatever the truth, the man faced serious consequences. He was a teacher and had been suspended from his employment as it involved work with minors, although the woman making the accusation was not a minor. He faced the possibility of being debarred from his home , denied unsupervised access to his children. He was, at the time of the reading, due to appear in court four days later.

A Tarot reading is not a substitute for suitable, professional legal, medical or financial advice. Forecasting is offered in good faith but is by law to be treated as being for interest’s sake. In consulting ANY oracle, you need always to be prepared for the possibility you really might not like the answer.

My client, his mother, wanted to be prepared for the worst, ready to support her son.

Based on this, I didn’t KNOW because a reader cannot KNOW for certain, ever. But I felt as certain as I could be, she was going to like this judge. I felt that the man was not guilty and that the judge would decide so.

Three weeks and several new grey hairs later, I learned the The Judge had thrown the case out. He had also offered this personal opinion:- verbatim (pardon me)

‘What a crock of sh*t.’

The Emperor at his very best represents order, structure, logic, sense and reason.

He is a chevalier, a sheltering tree, nests held safely in his branches. He is rule with mercy, compassion for the weak. He upholds fair play raising his shield so not everyone sheltering behind it gets splattered with rubbish and, er…manure.

He has another side to him of course: war, dictatorship, tyranny, petty officialdom, overbearing bureaucracy. The card may alternatively signify absence of structure and leadership. As a person, it may be pinpointing weakness or conversely, a bully boy. The Emperor Reversed is no joke, no doubt about it.

Historically, Emperors have often been catastrophic for the peace and happiness of their fellow humans, and Alexander the Great is no hero of mine; I’d rather nominate Dr John Snow or Charles Darwin, not only for their achievements, but for their humanity; as tender as tough.